ICYMI: April 17, 2016

What We Wrote

Christina Ellwood is a tech CMO, entrepreneur, and angel investor from the valley. She joined us to talk about sales and marketing alignment. We cover the common complaints you hear from both sides, then narrow it down to the root problem, and address potential solutions. Read this post... you won't regret it. 11 minute read

April Dunford, managing partner at Spint.ly, talks with us about her favourite topic — positioning. She tells us how she really feels about slogans, positioning exercises, and what parts of your brand to highlight. For those that are unfamiliar with April, she tells it how it is making this a highly entertaining listen. Listen here.21 minute listen

Holly Tiessen, the Chief Customer Office at PostBeyond, talks to us about customer success. Holly discusses what it means to be a Chief Customer Officer, how customer success can help bring sales and marketing together, and the importance of always delivering that "Wow" experience. Listen here.15 minutes

Frank Luby knows a lot about ebooks. They've become a popular piece for companies looking to educate leads, show thought leadership, and get prospects in the sales funnel, but have you ever thought of what ebooks could look like in the future? Frank has."Rethinking the ebook" — 4 minutes

Gerry Moran shares how social selling has taken a hold of the B2B world. Activating social media and content into a sales tool is tough, but chances are, your competitors already have. Gerry explains the rewards of social selling and easy steps to start your strategy."Social Selling. It's A Piece Of Cake." — 8 minutes

Dan Lyons tells his (controversial) story as a mid-life professional entering the high-flying startup world. Check out this 'sneak peak' article of his book "Disrupted". "My Year in Startup Hell" — 20 minutes & 3 minute video

Meme of the Week

It's not completely unexpected that weird things happen on occasion in the McDonalds drive-thru, especially at 1:00am, but this story via Twitter by @JoshRaby is something else. Here's a preview but we highly recommend reading the full story.

What we're reading

Lena Shaw explains the current state of Sales and Marketing stacks with companies invested in a number of siloed tools and platforms, and how in 2017 we should be looking to trim down with "best of breed" tools that should lead to better efficiency through the funnel. Making MarTech Consolidation Work for Your Business — 3 minutes

Ayaz Nanji points out the top three Sales challenges of 2017; too much time on non-sales activities, finding the right assets to assist in their sale, and spending time with prospects and clients. The Top Sales Challenges of 2017 — 2 minutes

Jim Brodo explains something that almost all of us have experienced: marketing fatigue. You know, like when you download some content and in return your inbox and voicemail gets filled up. Jim includes five marketing strategy areas to reconsider in order to avoid giving your prospects marketing fatigue. Your Buyers Are Experiencing Marketing Fatigue; Here's What to Do About It — 9 minutes

Casey Renner talks with Joe Sexton about preparing a startup sales organizations for going public. Great tips in here about sales enablement, using a formula-driven approach to scaling, and that everything starts and ends with the customer.Preparing Your Sales Org to Go Public — 13 minutes

Tomasz Tunguz tackles the tricky question of how to structure the compensation sales teams should get and how developing sales motions, customer success sophistication, and compensation structures to enable growth is a key area for a SaaS businesses. How Much To Compensate SaaS Sales Teams — 4 minutes

Meme of the week

On Wednesday, Beyoncé shared a photo of herself pointing at a menu, and (as expected) the internet did it's thing and quickly repurposed it into a quality meme.